


Fixation

by MamaMystique



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, References to the novel 'Hannibal'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 14:31:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3940345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MamaMystique/pseuds/MamaMystique
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slowly, like a child caught red-handed, he emerged from the shadows to face her.  "What ears you have, Doctor," he smiled, ever so slightly bearing his teeth.</p><p>"All the better to hear my husband with," Bedelia teased softly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fixation

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to the lovely kmo (bedannibal-lectaurier on Tumblr) for beta-ing this fic!

To be an object of curiosity to Hannibal Lecter was not new to Bedelia. During many a session he had prodded her just as much as she did him, both with equal, if little, reward. She would be the first to admit that his very mind and construction caused her to wonder at him in awe, and only prayed he thought the same of her. 

To bore Hannibal, especially now, on the run in Italy, would have fatal consequences. 

But as her eyes scanned over the countless drawings and graphite sketches, precise to every exact detail, she was stricken with something akin to both fear and delight. Bedelia brought her fingers down to hover over the face: _her_ face, rendered beautifully in grey on thick paper. It seemed as if every hair had been drawn on her head. Every flaw, blemish, and yet how extraordinary they looked as recreated by him. Bedelia was sure her eyes had never been that bright. Another drawing to the left held her attention now: her hands, outstretched, her tattoo replicated on the right wrist. Her wedding band from him was not absent. 

Bedelia caught her breath between her teeth. For eight months they had been married: or supposedly so. In that time, never once had his body or words betrayed any interest in her beyond her companionship and mind. But to see just how well he knew her, knew her face, her hands, her very skin...there must be something about her that fascinated him in equal measure of awe, something that drew his fixation. The thought made her heart race, and her blood run cold. She was playing a dangerous game with him, that she knew. If Hannibal saw her better suited as insentient decoration, as art rather than a living woman, he could make that permanent without a thought. And yet, perhaps, it was the possibility of her entire composition that drew him in. If so, Bedelia could make that equally permanent along with her continued life at his side.

"You are incredibly exact," Bedelia said aloud. To anyone else, she might have appeared paranoid, speaking to an empty room. But she and she alone could feel Hannibal's presence lingering behind the doorframe. She turned and rested herself against the table, her arms folded as she waited for him to appear. The drawings were left as a lure: better to acknowledge the provocation of her curiosity than deny it. "Come now. I know you're there, Hannibal."

Slowly, like a child caught red-handed, he emerged from the shadows to face her. "What ears you have, Doctor," he smiled, ever so slightly bearing his teeth.

"All the better to hear my husband with," Bedelia teased softly.

Hannibal's measured gait brought him before her, and even in her heels she only came up to his chin. In another marriage, in another life, that might have appealed to the romantic within her. He loomed over her, but Bedelia did not shy away, or blush, or act demure. _Don't be art._ "May I ask what you think?" He gestured gently to the drawings, searching for a weak point, for her to be afraid. 

"I think you have some practice needed still," she answered, not breaking the line of her gaze from his eyes. "You've given me the hands of a young woman. I am not young."

He tilted his head, his brow furling as he brought his large fingers down to envelop her left hand. She felt like porcelain in his grasp: priceless, appreciated, and utterly breakable. He plied at her wrist until her palm was presented to him, only then breaking eye contact to appraise what he held. A hum escaped his thin lips as he studied each finger, maroon gaze tracing over her skin and veins. "Perhaps," he finally spoke, "but if you must know why, it is because when I look at you, I find no need to look at your hands."

With his words, he placed a kiss to the center of her palm, letting her hand cup his jaw briefly before he pulled away. "It is the face that fascinates me. It is your face that fails me."

"Fails you?" Bedelia asked, her heart trembling even as she stood her ground.

"Completely," Hannibal whispered as he stepped closer, until her back was pressed firmly into the edge of the grand wood table, "and utterly. Yours I cannot perfectly recreate. Do you know why?"

Bedelia shivered inwardly as his fingers drew themselves along her jaw, a potent mix of arousal and terror flooding her body. "Tell me."

"Because I do not want to. You change so minutely from moment to moment - I could capture your eyes like they are now. Hooded. Small. But as soon as I do, you'll shift: you'll smile, and what I've captured is lost." His thumb came to brush near her brow. "I cannot bear to cage you. You fascinate me."

A spark ignited itself down her spine, and Bedelia released a gentle breath. "And if you could," the words are low in her throat, "what would you want?"

He did not smile with anything but his eyes. A predator's hunger swirled there, his pupils expanding ever so slightly as his palm came to rest on her shoulder. It was a look she was familiar with, one she once hid from but now had grown to expect. The thumb of his left hand insinuated itself beneath the strap of her dress, but he did not pull. His eyes were on her breasts, and Bedelia watched as his tongue flickered briefly between his teeth to his lips. Goosebumps erupted on her skin as he looked at her, until the moment was abruptly shattered when he stepped away. "Perhaps that is a conversation for another time." Hannibal moved to leave, but Bedelia knew then that he was fleeing: that he was not truly the God he envisioned himself as. She married a man, just a man, and that man was holding himself back. If he let go, he could fall to her feet. If he let go, she could survive him.

All it would take was his submission.

Dinner that night was unusually silent on Bedelia's behalf. She listened as Hannibal explained the dish to her, his inspiration, it's origination. Normally it would have fascinated her to study him as he preened, or at least question him as he did so, but not tonight. Tonight she fancied herself the hunter, waiting for her prey to stumble. Their shared feast was presented on crisp white plates, a haunch of sweet rabbit braised with honey and complemented by figs. It was only when Hannibal first bit into the fresh fruit that he noticed Bedelia's unusually direct gaze.

"Is there something wrong?" He asked, the pinnacle of politeness. Bedelia smiled. Unlike Hannibal, always searching, always prying in search of weakness, all Bedelia required was one gentle sweep in order to aim the arrow of her attack.

"Not at all. Rather, I was thinking of an unusual question. But," she dabbed at her lips with her napkin before selecting a plump fig with her fingers, "it is perhaps inappropriate for the current moment."

The mirror of her words was not lost on him, and Hannibal swirled his wine in it's glass. "You know I always welcome your thoughts Bedelia. Regardless of the setting. Your insight is very important to me."

Bedelia's teeth broke the skin of the fig, and she hid her smile behind stained lips. She chewed slowly, savoring the texture and flavor before swallowing. A nervous flutter of her stomach urged her on, a greed bordering on sinful drowning her caution as she built to her peak. "First I must know: you refused to answer me earlier, when I asked you what you wanted of me. Why?"

"I did not answer, because I do not know the answer."

"You do know Hannibal. You forget sometimes that I've known you longer than the FBI, longer than Will Graham. Lying to me requires more thought. I didn't spend three years sitting across from you staring wistfully at your face like a forlorn schoolgirl, sketching you in the margins of my legal pads"

Hannibal bristled, his feathers ruffled by her blatant reference to his own work of her. "I never suggested as such."

"No," Bedelia amended, "but your treatment of me does. You do have an ideal image of me, but you're hiding it away under pomp and charm. You're afraid," she added, "of me. Of what I'll think."

Hannibal's knife sliced easily through another portion of rabbit. "My need of you has not changed since Baltimore, not in purpose."

"It has." Bedelia steadied her breathing, anchored by her hands on the arms of her chair.

Hannibal set down his silverware, folding his hands on the table and fixing her with an ominous glare. "Explain it to me then."

Thousands of words flooded Bedelia's mind at once, and she chose from them carefully. "I am what you have left. In Baltimore, you had outlets. You had ways to satisfy all your needs, and I held a very specific role. But those outlets hurt you, and your masochistic love of them kept you blind right up until that final betrayal. Now you have nowhere to go, and whether you realize it or not, you are seeking me out to replace many of those needs." She paused, letting the moment settle. "You asked me to marry you. For cover, yes, but there was something else."

"Are you suggesting that I love you?"

"No," Bedelia assured. She knew him better than that. "But you were heartbroken when you came to me. You don't love Hannibal. Not me at least. But that doesn't stop your craving for affection. That was what Will offered you - his heart. And you devoured it, then wondered why it stopped beating for you."

The man sat to her side was no longer a man. The beast reared it's subtle head in the flicker of his eyes. "And what do you...offer me...that I cannot replace?" He drew his grasp around his wineglass, poised to strike.

Bedelia straightened her back, uncrossing and recrossing her legs under the table as she selected her answer. "Something you have longed for since before I met you, that was taken and has since found no suitable substitute."

A bemused look pulled at the corner of Hannibal's lips. "I presume we are arriving at your unorthodox question?"

 _Yes._ "Hannibal, were you breastfed by your mother?"

He paused at her sudden question, and the rim of his glass danced on the edge of his lips. It had not been what he expected. With a small smile, he fixed her with his gaze. “Yes.”

That was all she needed. “You’ve told me about Mischa,” Bedelia continued. “Did you ever feel that you had to relinquish your mother’s breast to her? Did you ever feel you were required to give it up for her?”

Hannibal sipped his wine, and placed the glass back down. “I don’t recall. And if I did give it up, I did so gladly.”

Bedelia’s eyes darkened. She reached her palm into the deep plunge of her gown and freed her breast, her coral nipple stiffening in the cool air. “You don’t have to give up this one,” she whispered. Hannibal’s shadowed, heavy eyes followed her index finger as she dipped it in her own glass of rich wine, and brought a thick droplet to the peak of her breast. Her slow breaths made her chest rise and fall, the wine suspended from her nipple like a perfect glimmering ruby. 

“This is...direct.”

"I offer you nothing Hannibal. You are not my God, and I am not your sacrifice. But you are my husband," she soothed, "did it ever occur to you to ask me for what you wanted?"

Hannibal rose from his seat immediately, swift steps bringing him to her side where he knelt, and Bedelia could not discern his intention as he drew his finger down her neck. He could end it there, and she would die at his dinner table as his next meal. "I was telling the truth earlier. I do not know what I want, only that I want." His words were emphasized by a sharp growl, and the tightness of his grip on her throat. "And you Bedelia, my wife. What do you want?"

Her voice came out as a barely audible whisper. "For you to be mine. If you give yourself to me, I will do the same. I will not love you, but I will be what you need." 

In a blur of motion Hannibal bent his head to her breast. His tongue caught the wine from her skin, his hand coming to claw at the side of her neck as he licked and sucked at her. Bedelia moaned in delighted surprise: she had not expected his reaction to be so immediate. Maybe he had been closer to to breaking than she thought.

His teeth caught her nipple harshly and she gasped before he began swirl his tongue over the swelling skin. _Don't be art,_ she thought, _he has exposed himself - you must be in control_ , and she pulled herself from the brink of complete surrender. Pushing her chair away she stood, her breast freeing from his mouth with only a soft sigh from Hannibal's lips. He was knelt at her feet now, and Bedelia gloried at the sight.

Hannibal looked up at her with glimmering eyes, lust and fear and hunger clouding the pupils that were now blown wide. His breath was hot on her clothed stomach, and she stroked his hair from where it stuck to his brow. “My love,” Bedelia murmured, “you need not long to capture me. I won’t leave you.” Her fingers grasped at the thin stem of her wine glass, bringing it to her shoulder where she poured a thin trail down her collarbone. The liquid rushed down her chest, her nipple cresting the small river, and Hannibal hesitated only a moment before he surged upwards and sunk his teeth gently into the underside of her breast. Bedelia’s lips fell open as his tongue soothed her reddened skin, lapping at the dark liquid, desperate and frantic as he drank her in.

At once she was gathered tight into his arms, her glass toppling to the floor and a moan pulled from her throat. His nose pressed against her forehead as he fought with the straps of her dress, pushing them down until she was bare to her midriff. She reached up to meet his lips with hers, but only found the underside of his jaw as he worked seriously at the pins in her hair. Her tongue skimmed the sharp cut of his chin as he grunted, his erection pressed hard to her abdomen. Pin after pin fell to the carpeted floor, Bedelia’s mouth resting, waiting, in the hollow of his throat.

Blonde waves spilled free and only then did he kiss her, one long sweeping motion as he tipped her chin up and captured her lips with his. It was their first true kiss, meant for one another and not for any sake of appearance, and Hannibal wrapped her roughly in his arms as he opened his mouth to her. Bedelia’s tongue snaked in, her lips swollen and flushed as she tugged at his bottom lip. His fear of abandonment made him gorgeous, as supple as worn leather beneath her touch. She could taste it in him, and the reckless desire to be drunk on her power drew closer.

"Bedelia," he whispered as she seared his lips with hers, and his words shook with an unsure tremor. "How do I know that you aren't attempting to cage me in a much more _permanent_ sense?"

"You don't," she panted breathily in response. Rolling up to the tips of the toes of her heels, she planted her lips to his temple and elaborated in a hushed voice. "It is a risk you must take if you want me with you. I am greedy Hannibal. I want things, many things. And if I am to be honest...I think you would be most exquisite bound in my snare."

Bedelia moved her hands away, slipping what remained of her garment down over her smooth hips and to the floor. "It is your decision, just as my choice to come with you was mine. I have accepted the very risk and nature of you. I wonder if you will do the same - accept me." _Worship me, _she almost added, and her entire being pricked with arousal at the thought. How lovely it would be to have the beast at her mercy.__

She stepped away from him, the outline of her near-naked figure somehow glowing in the dim light. “I know you Hannibal,” Bedelia hissed, turning her back to him and beginning her exit. Her heels clicked as she made her way to the wide door frame, intent to leave him suffering in his own turmoil.

She paused as Hannibal breathed in deeply. “And here I hardly recognize you.”

Ice blue eyes peered at him over her bare shoulder, the muscles of her back quivering beneath her skin. She moved like a snake set to shed it’s skin and reveal it’s deadly patterns. Bedelia did not reply, instead resumed her pace until she was gone from his vision. He would decide in his own time, she reasoned. No need to rush.

She made it as far as the stairway before his hands slid around her waist and his lips found the sensitive skin of her neck


End file.
